AN OFFICIAL of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) yesterday underscored the country’s potential to achieve energy security but stressed the need to improve technology, infrastructure, and strategic partnerships.
Speaking at the Energy Summit 2026 in Makati City, PCCI president Perry Ferrer said the Philippines is “richly endowed” with energy resources, including geothermal, solar, offshore, and wind energy.
“We are, in many ways, an underutilized one,” he said, referring to the country’s continued dependence on imported fossil fuels, which he noted increases both economic and national security risks.
He added: “The answer cannot be timidity [or] simply endure — to absorb higher prices, accept unreliable supply, and hope that the global order stabilizes in our favor. History teaches us that hope is not a strategy.”
Ferrer cited the need to accelerate the development of indigenous energy resources, modernize and strengthen energy infrastructure, and build strategic partnerships without compromising strategic autonomy.
“The Philippines can win this challenge. We have the resources. We have the ingenuity. We have a people who have rebuilt from typhoons, who have innovated in the face of adversity, who have never —in all our history— accepted that the odds against us are final. What we need now is the will —the political will, the institutional will, the collective national will— to act with the decisiveness that this moment demands,” he said.
In an interview after the panel discussions, Prime Infrastructure Capital, Inc. president and chief executive officer Jose Victor Emmanuel de Dios said the Department of Energy is facing challenges amid the ongoing Middle East crisis.
He, however, said the country is managing the situation well through close coordination between the government and private sector.
“Maybe a wish list is to see how the state-owned oil company can be more empowered. It’s not that they don’t have the mandate. It’s just that it’s so difficult dealing with this, with a crisis, with having to make sure that you have fuel, because it’s not so much power,” de Dios said. (PNA)
